With age comes wisdom... of a sort.

And whoosh! Another month goes by. Blame the soon-to-be-over (hopefully) temping hell. Not the the hours are that long, it's just that I find myself less inclined to sit at a computer typing my real-life nonsense when I can be sitting at my notebook computer typing fictional nonsense -- the kind that will never see the light of day.

Was munching on dinner and watching Superman just now -- the 1978 original. Now, at risk of dating myself, I was completely enamoured with this film as a tiny lass of four or five. I had this cool metal garbage pail that featured the scene where the newly landed child Kal-El lifts a car to free his stepfather.

Sure, I was little girl and I dug Barbie and all manner of silly childish toys, but I loved a number of things beyond reason: my Tonka truck (especially the steamroller), my stuffed Pink Panther, comic books, and all things Superman and Star Wars. And a couple of years later, all things Annie. But I get ahead of myself.

One of things I never could reconcile -- even as I got older -- was Clark Kent's bumbling-ness. It drove me absolutely bonkers to see bad-ass Superman (who, in the movie, is portrayed by Christopher Reeves) playing the fool. How could someone who had so many wonderful gifts be content to playing it goofy? He could have been a normal guy without the clumsy doofus routine.

I never got it.
Until now.

"What fun!" I thought to myself, gleefully. "What a great joke to be able to faint at trouble, or spill things and have people look at you with great pitying amusement!" Superman was having a great old time with comic role... and at the same time, with a completely condescending perspective of the human race.

"I can play human! I just have to behave like a well-meaning buffoon! Ha ha! I have the human race pegged. Look, I can scratch my balls, too! Hoo, hoo!

"Oooo, Lois isn't wearing panties under her skirt. That naughty bitch."

Superman was never my favourite super hero, but there's something about this off-the-wall kutz that I now find entertaining indeed. Something that fills my patched little heart with childish glee.

(I suspect it comes from the same place that chortles at the idea of having a high school reunion and informing people that I'm a laid-off grocery store clerk living in a trailer with five kids and a drunk husband.

My ego is rather unevenly dispersed. I think it's far healthier than all of these slobs who go about patting themselves on the back for their marvelousness.)